Trump was behind the misleading original statement about Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer

Donald
Trump Jr. with his father, Donald Trump, on the night of the Iowa
Caucus in Des Moines, Iowa, on February 1,
2016.Jim
Bourg/Reuters

President Donald Trump was behind a misleading statement that
incompletely described his son Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a
Russian lawyer in 2016, The Washington Post
reported on Monday.

The statement, published in July after The New York Times first
reported that the meeting took place, said that Trump Jr. and the
lawyer "primarily discussed a program about the adoption of
Russian children" and that the subject of conversation was "not a
campaign issue at the time."

But that characterization evolved over the next few days, with
Trump Jr. ultimately
publishing his email correspondences with the British music
publicist who organized the meeting. The email chain
indicated that the pretext of the meeting was that the lawyer
would provide the Trump campaign with damaging information about
Hillary Clinton "as part of Russia and its government's support
for Mr. Trump," to which Trump Jr. replied, "I love it."

Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his campaign chairman at
the time, Paul Manafort, also attended the meeting.

According to The Post, when news of the meeting broke, a group of
Trump's advisers agreed that the White House should release a
truthful statement that could not be repudiated if more details
surfaced later.

But Trump overruled the advisers and "personally dictated" the
misleading statement that was eventually published, according to
The Post's report. The statement was crafted aboard Air Force One
as Trump returned from the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, The
Post said.

Trump has maintained that he learned of the meeting just days
before The Times first reported on it, and previous reporting
suggested he had merely signed off on the statement. But Monday's
report describing direct involvement by Trump in the response
could attract more scrutiny to Trump amid investigations by
Congress and the FBI into Russian election interference.

"This was … unnecessary," one of Trump's advisers told The Post.
"Now someone can claim he's the one who attempted to mislead.
Somebody can argue the president is saying he doesn't want you to
say the whole truth."

The meeting has caught the attention of Robert Mueller, the
special counsel investigating possible collusion between the
Trump campaign and Russia. Mueller sent a request to White House
officials to preserve any documents relating to the 2016 meeting.

Trump has defended his son and has repeatedly
dismissed the Russia investigation, tweeting on July 15: "You
are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American
political history — led by some very bad and conflicted people!"